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Chargers are often advertised with only voltage, amps and the size of the cylindrical connector. In theory you also need to also check polarity of the pins.

I have seen many warnings of home made chargers damaging laptops when plugged in the wrong way. Given that home made chargers are relatively rare, and that I have not heard of off-the-shelf chargers damaging laptops with reversed polarity I suspect there is some attempt to keep at least a defacto standard for polarity for each connector size.

Is it worth worrying about say, a Dell laptop being damaged by having a standard HP charger with the right voltage and amperage plugged in?

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  • "has there every been a case of, say, a Dell laptop being damaged by having a standard HP charger with the right voltage and amperage plugged in?" - this is completely different from the question in the title. What is your real problem? "has there every been a case" - I don't think this could be answer, you can ask for experience, but we don't have a register of every cases somebody tried to charge a laptop with a non-factory charger.
    – Máté Juhász
    Commented May 30, 2019 at 10:12

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Laptop chargers are usually center positive, outside negative, including Dell and HP. See for example, https://dfarq.homeip.net/can-you-use-a-dell-charger-on-an-hp-laptop-sometimes/.

However, there is no official standard and so it is still wise to check polarity.

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  • This does seem to answer the question: No. I have left it community wiki, since it could do with some context. E.g. have any laptop manufacturer(s) explicitly adopted center positive as a defacto standard, or e.g. an example of a major players making chargers that fry other laptops.
    – gmatht
    Commented May 31, 2019 at 3:15

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